WEST MEMPHIS, Ark. — The patch of woods has been cleared, the shallow ditch has been rerouted, the Blue Beacon Truck Wash has been torn down and 16 years have passed. But though the setting where three 8-year-old boys were found killed, naked and bound, in 1993 is unrecognizable, the crime still has the power to dominate the front page of the small newspaper here and bring tight smiles to the lips of civic boosters.


Christopher Byers ------------- Michael Moore --------------- Steven Branch

For years, outsiders have raised questions about the guilt of the three misfit teenagers, Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols and Jessie Misskelley Jr., who were convicted of the murders. But more recently, a steady dribble of new evidence has begun to seep into the consciousness of West Memphis, eroding the once nearly unanimous belief that those outsiders — including rock stars, HBO filmmakers and the creators of “South Park” — did not know what they were talking about.

To Shaun Hair, 30, who left West Memphis for college after the killings, it was a jolt to hear friends and neighbors begin questioning the verdict. “I was like, ‘That’s stupid, quit buying the hype,’ ” he said.

But when Mr. Hair, who returned to the area in 1999 and now works as a criminal defense lawyer, re-examined the case, he found it troubling. “If I were the defense attorney,” he said, “I would want a retrial.”

Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Misskelley are serving life sentences; Mr. Echols is on death row. Their convictions were based on an error-riddled confession by Mr. Misskelley, who later recanted, and testimony about satanic cults. Scant physical evidence was presented.

More at the NEW YORK TIMES

Clinical picture different from seasonal influenza

Participants who have managed such cases agreed that the clinical picture in severe cases is strikingly different from the disease pattern seen during epidemics of seasonal influenza. While people with certain underlying medical conditions, including pregnancy, are known to be at increased risk, many severe cases occur in previously healthy young people. In these patients, predisposing factors that increase the risk of severe illness are not presently understood, though research is under way.

In severe cases, patients generally begin to deteriorate around 3 to 5 days after symptom onset. Deterioration is rapid, with many patients progressing to respiratory failure within 24 hours, requiring immediate admission to an intensive care unit. Upon admission, most patients need immediate respiratory support with mechanical ventilation. However, some patients do not respond well to conventional ventilatory support, further complicating the treatment.

On the positive side, findings presented during the meeting add to a growing body of evidence that prompt treatment with the antiviral drugs, oseltamivir or zanamivir, reduces the severity of illness and improves the chances of survival. These findings strengthen previous WHO recommendations for early treatment with these drugs for patients who meet treatment criteria, even in the absence of a positive confirmatory test.

In addition to pneumonia directly caused by replication of the virus, evidence shows that pneumonia caused by co-infection with bacteria can also contribute to a severe, rapidly progressive illness. Bacteria frequently reported include Streptococcus pneumoniae and Staphylococcus aureus, including methicillin-resistant strains in some cases. As these bacterial co-infections are more frequent than initially recognized, clinicians stressed the need to consider empiric antimicrobial therapy for community acquired pneumonia as an early treatment.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- Doctors say the H1N1 strain of influenza, commonly known as swine flu, is more likely to get deep into the lungs than seasonal influenza.

When that happens, patients tend to get viral pneumonia, The Washington Post reported.

The World Health Organization advised doctors to treat serious cases of H1N1 quickly with antiviral drugs and warned hospitals they may get a lot of extremely sick patients this winter.

...

The experts said that, as with seasonal flu, most people infected with the H1N1 strain experience only mild illness. But they also stressed differences. While seasonal flu kills the elderly and people with compromised immune systems, H1N1 targets the young."

More at UPI.COM

Oct. 16, 2009 (Baltimore) -- Researchers believe that there may be a link between a vaccine against cervical cancer and a rapidly progressive, fatal disease in two young women.

Both the timing of the symptoms and autopsy results “suggest a link between” the Gardasil vaccine and the fatal cases of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, says Catherine Lomen-Hoerth, MD, director of the ALS Center at University of California San Francisco Medical Center.

With only two confirmed cases, “we don’t know for sure if it’s coincidence or if they’re connected ,” she tells WebMD. “We hope that by raising awareness, we will become aware of any other cases."

Pam Eisele, a spokeswoman for Merck & Co., which makes the vaccine, says the company cannot comment specifically on the cases as it has not seen the data.

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Yadollah Harati, MD, a neurologist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, says the findings raise a red flag.

The fact that “the postmortem studies show distinct immunological features different from what is typical of ALS” suggest an association between vaccination and ALS, he says.

More at WEB MD

Lately I have been using the phrase "Corporate Communism" on my television show. I think it is an especially fitting term when discussing the current landscape in both our banking and health care systems.

As Americans, I believe we reject communism because it historically has allowed a tiny group of people to consolidate complete control over national resources (including people), in the process stifling competition, freedom and choice. It leaves its citizens stagnating under the perpetual broken systems with no natural motivation to innovate, improve services or reduce costs.

Lack of choice, lazy, unresponsive customer service, a culture of exploitation and a small powerbase formed by cronyism and nepotism are the hallmarks of a communist system that steals from its citizenry and a major reason why America spent half a century fighting a Cold War with the U.S.S.R.

And yet today we find ourselves as a country in two distinctly different categories: those who are forced to compete tooth and nail each day to provide value to society in return for income for ourselves and our families and those who would instead use our lawmaking apparatus to help themselves to our tax money and/or to protect themselves from true competition.

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Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-ratiga...

Top-ranking liberal lawmaker Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) pressed her colleagues to support a legislative counterpunch to the GOP’s effort to defund the controversial grass-roots organizing group ACORN.

McCollum, a senior Democratic Whip in her caucus, challenged the 172 Democrats who supported a measure to cut off federal funds for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) to endorse a similar measure geared towards private companies in business with the government.

...

In the findings portion of her bill, McCollum cites a recent case where pharmaceutical company Pfizer pleaded guilty to “intent to defraud or mislead” for the “illegal promotion of” Bextra – an arthritis drug voluntarily withdrawn from the market in 2005.

Under McCollum’s bill, Pfizer would be ineligible to enter into deals with the government. There have been many cases involving the pharmaceutical industry.

In 2008 alone, the pharmaceutical industry contributed $13,701,439 to federal candidates, divided equally between Democrats and Republicans, according to opensecrets.org.

MEDIA MATTERS

Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, and prominent conservative bloggers followed the lead of conservative website Breitbart.tv after the site falsely claimed that an online video showed community organizers from the Gamaliel Foundation "pray" to President Obama. Breitbart.tv subsequently updated the original post with an editor's note acknowledging that "there is a debate over what is actually being said" and that the crowd may, in fact, be saying "oh God" rather than "Obama"; the Gamaliel Foundation subsequently stated that "at no time have we prayed to President Obama" and that in the video, the organizers "can be heard saying, 'Hear our cry oh God,' 'Deliver us oh God,' etc."

On December 4, 2008, 500 leaders from 35 interfaith organizations from across the United States led a New Orleans style funeral march to the Washington offices of United Health care to demonstrate the need for comprehensive healthcare reform that provides medical coverage for every American citizen.

At that demonstration, several members representing Gamaliel Foundation affiliates spoke. Below are excerpts of what was said:

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As a faith-based organization, it is customary for Gamaliel Foundation affiliates to begin and end every action with prayer. At no time, however, have we prayed to President Barack Obama. In the form of call and response, those who took part in the UnitedHealthcare action can be heard saying, “Hear our cry oh God,” “Deliver us oh God,” etc.

It is obvious that those who took the time to distort our sincere action for healthcare reform, by posting their own edited version on the Internet, are against what we believe is a fundamental right.

Health authorities are also debating the proposed use of an adjuvant in the pandemic shots, which boosts the effectiveness of the vaccine so a lower dose of the active ingredient can be used.

Canada's seasonal and pandemic flu vaccine contract is with GlaxoSmithKline, which makes the vaccines at its facility in Quebec City.

GSK plans to sell H1N1 vaccine that includes 3.75 microgram doses with adjuvant — 25 per cent of the size of the doses the United States is buying from pandemic vaccine suppliers that are not using adjuvants.

The federal government has ordered 50.4 million doses of vaccine, most of which will contain an adjuvant. About 1.2 million doses have been set aside that won't include the adjvuant and are intended for pregnant women. Little research has been done on the effect the adjuvant could have on them.

Other unresolved questions include whether an adjuvant is needed at all...

AMERICAN THINKER

~ SNIP ~

Barack Obama gave five interviews last Sunday, and only one interviewer bothered to ask him about the ACORN scandal. ACORN is the leftist activist organization that lost its federal funds last week in a Congressional vote that was not even close. Obama's answer to his lone ACORN question was amazing. He brazened it out: "Frankly," said the President, "it's not something I've followed closely. This is not the biggest issue facing the country. It's not something I'm paying a lot of attention to."

Not something he's paying a lot of attention to. This is the same Barack Obama who said, in an address to ACORN in 2007, "I have been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career."

One of Barack Obama's jobs out of college was with ACORN as a community organizer. Obama hired ACORN affiliates for voter registration. Obama was a speaker at ACORN seminars. Obama was their lawyer.

And now he says that the enormous and growing ACORN scandal is not something he is "paying a lot of attention to"? And that the ACORN scandal is "not the biggest issue facing the country"? I beg to differ. I think a national organization that is dedicated to stealth revolution, Communism, ripping off the American taxpayer, and subverting free markets, among other insidious objectives, is of enormous import.

I told him (O'Keefe) that in addition to launching his compelling and stylized Web videos, we needed to offer the full transcripts and audio to the public in the name of transparency, and to offer Fox News the full footage of each video before each was released. We had to devise a plan that would force the media to see the evidence before they had enough time to destroy these two idealistic 20-something truth seekers. Mr. O’Keefe agreed to post the full audio and full transcript of his video experiences at BigGovernment.com."

I felt I had a moral obligation to protect these young muckrakers from the left and from the media, and to devise a strategy that would force the media’s hand.

"the girls are coming this weekend, that's why we're in an emergency situation, that's why we like ran in here for help, because I wanna get them before the pimp has time to bond with them and you know, herd them away."

In a press conference Thursday at ACORN's National City headquarters, Vera said statements he made in the video were taken out of context.

The now-former ACORN worker said he was merely trying to help the pair because he thought they were in danger.

"I never done anything wrong in my life," Vera said. "They destroyed my family."